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9.2% jump in arms transfer shows this is era of war—SIPRI reveals the temper we live in

The volume of major arms transfers has risen by 9.2% compared to 2016-2020. The increase is driven overwhelmingly by Europe’s rearming, followed by the Middle East.

The quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry.” When 18th-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham made this remark, he meant quite seriously that all pleasures could be equal in value regardless of their source. He argued that the joy derived from a child’s game of push-pin is similar to the delight of reading poetry.

His illustrious student, John Stuart Mill, however, was uneasy with this arithmetic view of human experience. Mill insisted that some pleasures were simply of a higher value than others, giving the argument a qualitative twist.

This oddly sobering philosophical quandary comes to mind as I sieve through the latest dataset from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Because what SIPRI attempts, year after year, and especially every five years, is something unmistakably Bentham-esque and yet post-Bentham in effect: the true measurement of global trends in war-capacity.

While there is nothing remotely poetic about the clouds of despair descending on a warring world, SIPRI’s methodology highlights the origin and value of the weapons themselves, away from a simplistic count of crude tallies. Analysts, defence industries and scholars scour its tables to see who is buying, who is selling and how the balance of military capability is shifting in “values”.

The latest dataset, from 2021 to 2025, was released on 9 March. At the outset, it confirms what the geopolitical atmosphere is already reeking of—this is the era of war, and the world is re-arming.

The volume of major arms transfers has risen by 9.2 per cent compared to 2016-2020. The increase, largest since the early 2010s, is driven overwhelmingly by Europe’s rearming, followed by the Middle East.

Analysis from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS, too, shows global military expenditure continues to climb through 2025. Europe now accounts for more than 21 per cent of global defence spending—an increase from around 17 per cent only a few years ago.

Globally, military expenditure has crossed the symbolic threshold of 2 per cent of GDP and the global........

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